[jmyeet]

I find almost all modern content producers to be a depressing business, fundamentally incompatible with being a large corporation. This includes movies, TV and video games.

The problem is the large corporation wants to remove creativity from the process. They want a repeatable formula that they can scale and infinitely reproduce.

The wet dream for the modern AAA studio is a "game" like FIFA that has annual releases and loot boxes to gamble on to get better pixels. Call of Duty and similar games are the next best because it's user-generated content ("UGC"). They still have to invest to create maps, which they don't like doing. But you still have micro-transactions for skins so that's good (for them).

I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey a lot. Some people don't like it because it's too CRPG. That's why I liked it. They paid a lot of attention to the environment. I've heard of teachers using it to portray ancient Greece.

They managed this even though it was a little formulaic. I suspect that any future AC releases will be even more formulaic.

The one exception to this "large game studio = bad" rule had been Rockstar. The various GTA3 titles and GTA4 were widely renowned because of their social commentary and wit, as well as being groundbreaking (at the time) for open world games.

But GTA5 was a turning point for me. Yes it was a sprawling, beautiful environment but the writing was complete ass. It had none of the intelligence and insight of earlier titles. The characters were awful. But Rockstar seemingly didn't care because they're discovered the GTA Online money faucet, something I don't care about at all.

I really wonder if GTA6 will be beautiful but soulless. It coudl go either way. RDR2 was released after GTA5, after all.

These big studios really do have a habit of killing successful franchises or simply sucking the life out of them. There are few bigger fumbles than the EA SimCity fiasco. I guess you can say Civilization has maintained... something. But honestly I haven't really felt compelled to play the franchise much since Civ4.

I do miss the days when games were games not just loot box slot machines with annual reskins.

[jeffwask]

There are still a few studios fighting the good fight

Rockstar, CDPR (they at least made up for their big mistake), Larian, FromSoft, Naughty Dog, Valve

[direwolf20]

Does Valve even still make games?

[NekkoDroid]

At this point I'd call Valve a platform company (both in Steam and SteamOS (and all the mostly open source development that comes with it)) that occasionally releases games.

[telios]

Deadlock is in active development, so... I think so?

[jeffwask]

I live in eternal hope.

[thewebguyd]

> I guess you can say Civilization has maintained... something.

Civ 7 sort of killed that, unfortunately, but at least the bones are there and future updates can fix it, I think it was largely just released unfinished.

Which is another pet peeve of mine with AAA studios lately. So many are putting out what are rightfully early access/beta versions as the full release, then "fixing" it with paid DLCs down the road. At this point, I no longer by AAA games on release. I wait a few years until I can get it + all the DLC on a steam sale for half the cost.

> I do miss the days when games were games not just loot box slot machines with annual reskins.

That still exists, you just won't get it from AAA studios. Thankfully there's a thriving indie scene and fantastic titles from smaller studios, most of which are better than the AAA slop coming out now. There's been some good releases from big names recently, mostly BG3, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk but all the others? I feel like gaming peaked, for the type that I play, with the Witcher 3 and its been downhill since then.

[arein3]

Also played Odyssey 2 times, IMO the best one.